Where good taste, clear and distinct ideas, and graceful modulations tend to be viewed with lowering suspicion.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

not dead till we say he's dead

The persistence of pope stories. Today on NPR, how brave was John Paul II. These having nothing to do with breaking news, but serve a phatic function. This function in effect says:

"We know the pope is dead, and that there is nothing more dead than a story after death. Viz. Schiavo. But we want to telegraph that we will be covering in excessive detail the election of a new pope, his identity, background, church issues, politics, impacts, etc. If we let the pope lie still, you will wonder at us when we begin so soon this new agitation on the same topic. But if we continue a mild ripple in this interim, the story will not lie cold and dark, but simmer. We're cooking your future news for you - be patient and you'll have a nice new pope product to consume real soon. Then elimination."

6 Comments:

Anonymous said...

It's not Unthinkable the NewPope will be Part of the Big Get-together that Includes Bush and His Sadistic Pragmatists and Sharon and His, as well as the Pulsing Beaming Fundamentals in Both Camps, plus the Electoral Victors in England and France, more than Likely. Chosen. Elect. Opposite the Preterite.NewPope being a Good Ol' Boy, Kinda-Sorta.Bringing the Sheepies into the Much Larger Fold. NewPope's got a Posse of the Faithful Right to Hand. A Big One.The More Thoughtful tend to Dismiss the Superstitious Credulous as Unimportant because as Individuals They Don't Count for Much - in a Job-Related Competition They're Chaff and Detritus, Service-Folk - but in The Larger Swim They're as Big as the Number of Them is. Termites are Fragile Little Things on Their Own Like That - but in Swarms, and with Leadership, They'll Eat a House Back into Dust in One Season.Popenews is Prep for that. A Vast Coalescence of The Sheep. The Light Bright Heart of the Innocent God-Mind They'll Make Together in the Pulsing-Hive. Don't count the Bones and Hearts at the Little Door To Get In. Don't Look Back. Submit and Gain Immortality, at the Cost Only of Your Soul. The Lies and Vicious Things They Did To Make This Happen Please Ignore. All That Ugliness will Melt in the Perfection of Their Becoming. Like Babies Have No Idea, So Are Innocent. A God Made out of Babies, just Around The Corner, Blasting Its Powerful Thought-beams Back Thru Time.Multitudes in Aggregate and all Morality Bent to Serve That. The Cover Story was that It was About The Sheep, it Was Not Ever. Nor is this Remnant Tidbit-Newsfeed about the Papacy, Per Se. It Was As It Is - a Course From Above and Beyond Mere Human Intellect. One Course of Many.To Serve.Man, As It Were.

Last night (Sun 17) FOX CNN and MSNBC all had identical camera coverage of the Cardinals' pomp and circumstantial flurry. Including cut-to's and pans. I kept switching back and forth and it was like blinking one eye then the other, one camera next to the other giving that bicameral view - then it was just like blinking one eye, like only having one eye. The steady gaze of the erstwhile Panopticon.The Masters want us very much to honor the new Pope, very much. It's getting plainer by the hour. Fascism - image of; the bundle of separate sticks becoming a solid and powerful weapon/tool.

Was the monoptical coverage of the Holy See any different in this respect from US media coverage of anything else? Got to love how they try to manufacture national pride stories - it's the c-a-t-h-o-l-i-c church, morans!

What has happened is the major publications, TV, and NPR have become editor-heavy. Top down control from frightened managerial types who long ago confused news with careers, nice neighborhoods, upscale cars, press clubs, distinguished hair, and assorted other properties. They will not cover a story unless it has already been covered, so we have no news. They will only cover a story the way it is already being covered, so we have no diversity of non-news.

Wolcott nails this with a laser: "The slumming populism of the press under Bush could gag a horse," he said the other day, and he was thinking of Time Magazine, for one.

The only thing is, I don't believe for a minute that these media types are actually worried about Bush or his goons. They're worried about the fact that the rest of the world is thinking about reality, about the future, in ways they are unable to comprehend, and even if they could "get" it, they know they'd be blown out of the market if they attempted to present it. They are jiggery-pokery class presidents, trying to say the nice right things to a bunch of snoring parental figures. Let them eat pope.